August

by Romina Paula

  So anyway, all that, that I had decided to return to Buenos Aires first thing tomorrow on the earliest bus I could take, at whatever time, to get there as soon as I could, to get on with my life. My life. That split is odd, speaking from here and referring to my life as though it were something else, as though it were happening right now in some other place, as though it were possible to return to life, to my life, to one’s life. And I’m waiting at the light to cross the street and someone honks, a pickup honks and stops. It’s Juli, it’s Julián in the truck from the other day. He’s not alone, on the passenger side, just sitting there loose like a little parcel, is the kid, his son, León. I can’t believe it. The kid’s closest to me. I go up to the window and he looks at me, the two of them look at me. Julián looks happy, surprised and pleased, he asks where I’m off to, if I want a ride, I say no, that I’m going right across the street, to the station, to get my ticket. You’re leaving? he asks me, and I say yes, as soon as possible, that tonight or tomorrow morning at the latest, he asks me if I’m running away, you’re trying to escape, he says, playfully, and I flash him a fake smile, as my only response, to his provocation. Is he yours? is the rhetorical question I then ask, and the child looks at me with eyes wide, brown eyes, light brown, just like Juli’s, and his dad introduces us: this is León, this is Emi, Emilia, my ex, take a look at her, isn’t she pretty? She could have been your mother. You’re such an asshole, I say, wipe his face off, at least, you jackass, he’s got snot all over him. I reach over through the window and wipe the snot off with the filthy bib the kid has on. I’m inundated with tenderness. I can’t believe it and would like to avoid it at all costs, but I’m touched. So fucked up, maternal instinct or feminine instinct, whatever the fuck it is. Something like that desire to have stuffed animals, that’s it, that stupid stuffed-animal sensation/need. Although it’s not always, often I don’t give a shit about kids, I mean I don’t care about them any more than I do adults; there are a few I like and others I don’t, like with anything, their condition neither exempts nor favors them. But this one in particular—I’m so predictable—I like. He’s a little gruff, like Juli, I can tell. He looks at me suspiciously, and of course he’s right. He scrunches up his forehead and watches me closely. Scrutinizes me. I say, hey kid, and he doesn’t even remotely respond, he just stares at me. He’s the exact opposite of a little demagogue. I like that. Soon enough, when he starts talking, he’ll probably turn out to be just as sarcastic as his father. Captivating. Cute kid, I say, such a bad attitude. He does, he says, he has a really lousy character. He’s also very aware of everything, says his father. I like him, I add. Do you want me to give you a ride? he asks, and I look at him askance, remind him where I’m going is a few feet away. No, no, he says, tomorrow at dawn I’m leaving for Trelew, I have to make a delivery, if it’d help I could take you. What would I do in Trelew? You’d take a bus. It’s been ages since I’ve been to Trelew. I ask him if he thinks it’s a good idea, he says he thinks it is, and it strikes me that it would be, that it is a great opportunity to have Julián all to myself, for the last time, probably, and to share a trip with him, with him and across the desert. But to be returning, at the same time be returning. I can’t believe how fortunate and perfect the prospect is, it’s been a while since anything has excited me this much. Okay, I tell him. And we agree that he will pick me up in the morning. I say goodbye to little León with a kiss on the forehead, he makes no sound, just closes his eyes, his head smells like things, a little bit like baby and another little bit like baby fluids, and a smidge like fried food. Give him a bath, dickhead, he smells like cutlets, I tell his father, and the kid looks at me with his eyes wide open, as though requesting I behave myself, as though demanding that of me. I’ll see you, adds Julián, and he gets going. I wave goodbye, León responds by lifting up his little hand, he shakes it a bit and puts it in his mouth, his hand covered in dirt and snot.

  Get a load of that, will you, a trip with Julián, in a truck, across the desert. Five minutes prior, one minute prior to that honking I was heading to the bus station to finish with all this, or, at least, to distance myself from it, or, at least, to put a safe distance between us, and now—boom—I find myself embarked upon a dangerous, attractive, not to say tantalizing, trip across the desert with the death-drive guy. A good opportunity to die, perhaps? Just crash the truck, and both of us could be smashed to smithereens, the two of us together on some torn-up road, blow a tire at full speed and flip over, hit some little animal at full speed and flip over trying to avoid it and not being able to, not being able to avoid it and plough right into it and have it smash into the car, have it break the glass and come into the cabin with us, have it plough into us and disfigure us, because of the pressure, because of the weight of its body and the glass, to die, to die together and have them find us days later, many days later, maybe a family, maybe another traveler on a bus, a bus driver, torn apart and in the sun, half-eaten by vultures, half-bored-into by larvae, fly larvae that would have already nested in under our skin, taking us over? Nothing bad, a tragedy, two lives literally destroyed, that’s what the papers would say, in Esquel, in Buenos Aires, two orphaned children, one of them about to be born, what a tragedy, and yet, destiny; those closest to us would understand that, the destiny thing, you would understand it, as much as you might disagree with this trip I’m taking, that I’m accepting, that I’m choosing, you’d understand it. You’d have no choice but to understand it. Of course, they died together, that’s how it had to happen, such was their destiny, to rest together for all eternity. They’d need to leave us there, rotting in the sun, alongside a road in the desert, between Esquel and Madryn, so that order could impose itself anew, so that it would be restored, and becoming dust and spider food and worm compost, on the desert earth, which doesn’t need us, which won’t absorb us, fat, two stains of fat over infertile ground, dry, cracked, that would be good.

  23.

  I swing by my dad’s to say goodbye. I have the wisdom not to mention anything about my plans, about the plan to destroy myself in the desert alongside Julián, because I have a visceral relationship with him, irremediable, impossible to live with. I don’t tell him anything, I mean, I do tell him that Julián is taking me, that I do say, and even that’s enough for him to glance over at me with an expression I know well, I’ve seen that face before, the what are we going to do with you, Emilia face, what are we going to do, and yet he knows, he knows I can’t help it, he knows it’s stronger than I am and he realizes—right now—that that has not changed. He asks, not without malice, and this is all he will say on the subject, if the whole family is going, or just the two of us. Another fake smile on my part, and a clap on the arm, for the audacity, for the perspicacity, for the degree to which his comment is appropriate.

  24.

  This one is a married couple around sixty years old. He has a serious Psycho face people would line up to see; she has a smile, a wig, shiny/new teeth. They smile, arms around each other, in all the photos. He buys a car to take her on a trip. A few days later—yet again, modus operandi—he says she has left, run off, with the car. There are witnesses who say they saw a suspicious woman with that same car, some ways away. The mysterious woman goes to an ATM, takes out money with her card, Denise’s card, her own card, it’s caught on camera, and there definitely is something strange about her. Her husband goes on the radio, begs her to come back, even if it’s just for their grandchildren. In a plaintive tone he asks her to at least take pity on the grandkids. A few days later her family gets a goodbye letter from their mother, a suicide note. She laments in the card, says she’s sorry for not having been able to be a good wife for George—the widower. A few days later someone finds the woman’s sweater and her purse on the seashore. The hypothesis gets confirmed: suicide. But her daughter doesn’t give up: she denies that the handwriting on the goodbye letter is her mother’s, there’s something there that doesn’t quite convince her. So, they take the envelope and have it analyzed, the par
t you seal with saliva. And the DNA they find belongs to none other than George. They get him, and he confesses: he bludgeoned her and then he took her to his place of work and incinerated her in a furnace. All the rest was fake. And—of course—the mysterious woman who was seen in her car was just George dressed up as Denise/wearing his wife’s clothing/wearing his Denise’s clothes. It’s strange that with that capacity for fiction he would have overlooked the envelope. Yet again the devouring thing, the swallowing thing, in the family. Everything kept in the family.

  25.

  I have dinner with your parents, just informally. I didn’t have time to let your sister know, so I said goodbye over the phone; I think it was easier for her to do it that way too. She even got a little bit affectionate, I think she said something along the lines of nice to see you or safe travels or take care or something like that, surprising. I didn’t even call Vanina, I didn’t feel like it, I’ll send her an email from Buenos Aires. I didn’t feel like dealing with her questions, or like evading them, either, I wouldn’t have been able to; and so I simply did not say goodbye. When I got home, to your house, it was already nighttime. It wasn’t too late, but it was dark out already. I arrived with some provisions, a kind of minimal gift for your parents. I got some nice wines and some cold cuts to snack on, some of that prosciutto your dad likes. He still hadn’t gotten there, so I ended up chatting with your mom in the kitchen. She was washing some vegetables, I told her I was leaving first thing in the morning, and she instantly started putting together a farewell dinner. I couldn’t say no. I also wouldn’t have wanted to. She said she’d gotten a couple of good veggies, really fresh, and she wanted to make a stew, so how could I say no? So I stayed with her in the kitchen, I asked if I could help, but she said no; in exchange she had me prepare her some mates and tell her what I’d been up to the past couple of days. So I told her the whole situation, the sequence of run-ins with Julián, the extent to which that had affected me, how unresolved it all was for me, the Manuel thing too, I also talked to her about Manuel, about the phone call, my confusion, the impossibility of knowing, of understanding. We talked about him and his kids, what your mom knew about it all. The overview that she gave was quite a bit less idyllic than I had imagined. She feels really sorry for them: Juli, the girl, the kid. I wanted to know why she’d feel sorry, and she said, well, that she imagined something else when she thought about a family, that Julián barely knew that girl when he got her pregnant, and that that girl was not at all prepared to be a mother, poor thing, she’d barely graduated from high school, and that is quite apparent, the body knows, that why did I think she’d have such troublesome pregnancies otherwise? The body knows, communicates, and if a girl that young can’t have a healthy pregnancy it means something. That, you know, for the man it was different, that she saw Julián coming and going with the kid, when he felt like it, because he kept working, went on with his life, goes out, sees his friends, and meanwhile the poor girl spends her life in bed. That she isn’t saying anything about him, that she thinks it’s good for him to go about his life and all, but that you have to think things through more, that a child ought not to be a caprice, a pastime, or something to fill a void, to have something to do, that you just cannot be that irresponsible, that egotistical. That was it, that in some sense it’s just egotistical because those children, those people, are new people, and you have to have something to give them, something with which to receive them, the best intentions at the very least, and actually not even. That even the best intentions aren’t enough. That it makes her a little bit sad how unaware they are, makes her feel a little helpless. It did me good to hear all that, because in some way it demystified the whole matter and helped me remember what a burden fatherhood would be, all that responsibility and that permanence, what it means for there to be a whole new person. But on the other hand I also think, and I told your mother this, that a certain degree of unawareness is probably necessary in order to conceive, to have children. That, in some sense, it has to be a kind of game, because if you overthink it you’ll never do it. And she said that yes, well, that maybe, but that in any case that young girl certainly was not able to enjoy being a mother, not even the pregnancies, because of being in bed all day, like a convalescent, as though the children or maternity sickened rather than fulfilled her, rather than being a fortunate event, bringing joy, and that she, personally, did not wish that for her daughters. For her daughters, she said, and immediately made a little gesture with her hand as though including me in that comment, including me in the daughters part, I guess, or at least in the maternity part. Then, as she put a lid on the pot where she was making the stew, she told me that as far as Julián went, in terms of what I’d told her about my confusion, my distress, that I try to just take it in stride, that I just enjoy the trip and seeing him after all this time. You two must have lots to talk about, a lot to tell one another, to catch up; she said I should enjoy that and not oblige myself to know, that was the main thing, that one never completely knows anything, that things, that events, ultimately decide for you, and that I ought to just let myself be. That I let myself be. Strangely that phrase always makes me think of letting yourself go, even though I know it’s not really related.

  And then your dad came, and we uncorked the wine and ate prosciutto and ate stew, and we still felt like a few rounds of dice. Your dad got out the Chivas and we sipped from our glasses, and the whole time Ali was curled up on my lap, the whole time we sat chatting after dinner. I felt like she could sense my departure. Or at least I liked the idea of feeling missed. Then your mom could barely keep her eyes open, so we said goodbye. They insisted on getting up in the morning to say goodbye, make me a coffee or something, some mates, especially your mom, and I kept saying no, that it wasn’t in the morning, even, it was really first first thing, and that I wouldn’t even want to have a beverage at that hour, that it was getting super late now and that I probably wouldn’t even sleep, that they should just go to bed and not worry about it. They gave me hugs, it was very emotional, but like an exuberant emotion; your mom said take care, looking into my eyes, and immediately added, and have fun; your dad gave his classic little claps on the back, said to say hello to Ramiro, and as he was walking out he added, I’ll be seeing you for a white wine again at Scuzzi. I laughed, said whenever he wanted, and they went to bed. I stayed there with Ali, me standing up in the kitchen, her lying down on the floor, stretching and considering/sniffing out what her next sleeping spot might be.

  I decided that I wouldn’t go to sleep. I was already too far gone, and I didn’t feel like sleeping through my last few hours in Esquel.

  26.

  I got my bag ready, I didn’t have all that much to put in it. I packed the Counting Crows CD, hope that’s okay with you, and decided to take your jacket. Like to wear it out. Take it on me. I end up just hovering, and decide to go watch television. When I go to look for the headphones in the entertainment center so as not to bother your parents, I discover a discreet collection of VHS tapes, most of them recorded off TV, with movie titles written in by hand. Some in your handwriting, Reality Bites, for example. I can’t believe that still exists, can’t believe it could possibly have survived the hours and hours of exposure to which we subjected it. I thought we’d used it up, literally. But no. So then I knew what to do for the next hour and a half. At first the tracking had a little trouble, the tape started out with an episode of The Simpsons, one of the first ones, the one with Nanny Potts. Too bad, I could have happily watched that as well. Anyway, but so I put on the headphones, pull the armchair up, and Ali gets comfortable on my lap, not without first kneading me with her paws and claws, bumping up into the unconscious, into sleep.

  So anyway, Winona Ryder and Janeane Garofalo are driving in their car, singing, provoking Ben Stiller, which is how it all starts. Ben Stiller! He did pretty well for himself there in the end, acting like an idiot, catching his dick on his zipper, getting into just about every scatological situation possible, in later
movies. But this is the first one I ever saw him in, and I would go so far as to say it’s the most dramatic role of his career. I remember I kind of had a crush on Ben, when I saw that movie, when we saw it back then, back when he was a thirtysomething yuppie. The one who didn’t end up doing that well was Winona, who seemed to hold such promise. Didn’t she? Or did she not? I feel like she got stuck in the nineties, like she just couldn’t make the transition into the next century. Is there anything more nineties than Winona Ryder? There are probably a few other things, but without a doubt she’d have to be in the top ten. Poor Winona, now I see her and think she’s overacting. But that was her thing, right? That was part of her charm. We all wanted to have her haircut and have it look as good on us as it did on her. In this she’s great, I think it’s the best thing she did. This and Mermaids and Beetlejuice too. But I’d take this one over those, she’s gorgeous in it. In Reality Bites, Winona, you will always shine. And then there’s Ethan, the most respectable of the three, I guess. He doesn’t act in that many things, he tends to choose pretty good projects, he was married to Uma Thurman. In this one he and Winona are a lovely, horny young couple. There’s some kind of youthful spirit there, fairly cheap, but effective in the end.

  I don’t know if the movie is good or not, probably not, but it doesn’t really matter. The soundtrack holds up, it’s still good, Garofalo is a great supporting role with her incredible voice, her baby face, and those bangs, and the movie has a couple of little gems that still work. Like that first dialogue between Ethan and Winona, walking around the city, with that little conversation of you and me and coffee and cigarettes and we don’t need any more than that, something like that, and then the scene of them kissing, when they finally kiss, where she’s wearing this highly sexy pajama-type outfit, and finally they kiss against the fridge, and it just kills you, that still works. And at the end, too, when he gets out of the taxi and is standing there in his brown suit, after shot after shot of Winona filling up ashtrays with cigarette butts and getting psychological assistance over the phone; he’s there, she’s there, they love each other, and that’s it, they don’t need any more than that, just having one another is plenty/enough. They’re so hopeful. But sometimes, now, for example, that tonic hits the spot, that message of hope to think that love is enough, love, tobacco, coffee, and a few ideals, or not even, a couple of principles is plenty, no? Or at least in Houston in the nineties it appeared to work, right? I turn off the TV and there’s not that much time left now before I leave. I go to the kitchen. I lift up Ali, who wakes up slightly but quickly gets situated again in the armchair. I ended up wanting coffee. And wanting to smoke. But I don’t have anything to smoke, not cigarettes or pot. That’s on Juli. So I put on some coffee—it smells incredible—and make a couple of salami-and-cheese sandwiches for the road. With mayonnaise for Juli, cream cheese for me.